We meet with people all the time about building a website. Time and time again, they lack some essential things before starting a website.

1. Content — Web designers are in business to design your website, not invent your content. We can of course guide you with regards to writing content that is effective and search engine friendly and we can also write your content for you, but that often is very costly. THEREFORE, It is key to make sure you have your content organized. Each page on your site will have 3 things. TEXT, IMAGES, and FUNCTIONS. For example, your contact page will have text for your address, email, phone; an image of a google map or maybe of your office; and the site will function in a certain way by allowing users to fill out a contact form. Make sure you have defined and prepare the text, images, and functions for each page. These are not light decisions, think hard.
2. Logos — This is sort of like content. Too many companies don’t have logos or they have a logo from some guy and they can’t find the cd or the guy who made it doesnt return phone calls, etc. A logo is key to your image, your brand, your message. Get a good logo and make sure you have a high res full color version to hand to your web designer. This logo will play a role in the design of your site.
3. Traffic Plan — So many people think that if they build a site, they will magically land on page 1 and all internet traffic will make a sharp left turn towards their site. Right… The reality is you need to develop an action plan for how you plan to get traffic to your site. Some options are a) business cards, billboards or other offline media b) Google Adwords c) search engine landing pages d) blogging e) lots of inbound links f) telling every one and their brother g) good PR.
4. Budget – Good websites don’t cost $500. Period. Get a budget. That doesn’t mean 10K. Just have a realistic plan of what you can spend. 3-5K is a solid budget for a small business website. 7-10K is a great budget for a much larger, perhaps more dynamic small business website. These budgets could swing largely depending on the functionality, design intensity, and SEO requirements of your site. The main point is that having a budget helps you decide on what you have to spend. You can work with your web designer to figure out what you can get for that budget.
5. Maintenance — A site that doesn’t get updated is a site that will not perform very well. Users expect fresh (not updated last year) content. Make sure the site you build has a content management system that will allow you to update pages, add news, add events, etc so that your site is dynamic and also helps you manage recurring costs as you or a staffer can make changes without having to pay a web designer to type!